Louder than Words
by Corilyne
Summary: “How different were they?” Lucy asked. “Horribly different! I left you there, and you were dead the next morning! Or I died, and then you died and blamed me, or I stabbed you with the knife!” Edmund/Lucy SIBLING BONDING! No incest!


"Lucy, just leave me alone! Why can't you go play with your friends and _leave me alone_?" Edmund asked angrily. Lucy had been playing in _his_ room, pretending to read _his_ books, and she drew a _flower_ in the book that his grandfather had given him. It was in _ink_, too, so he couldn't even get rid of it.

"Well, the girls in my class won't play with me because . . . well, I don't really know why. Playing with Susie is alright, but she doesn't answer me," she said mournfully.

Edmund had to think for a moment. Why _couldn't_ Susan talk to Lucy? Realization dawned. 'Susie' was Lucy's stuffed dog that she carried around almost all the time. _Probably why none of the girls in her class will associate with her, _he thought.

"Go . . . help Susan and Mum cook supper or something!" he cried desperately.

"But cooking's boring, Ed! You know that!" her face turned mischievous, "I'll only go help cook if you do too."

"No!" he practically yelled, and then glanced at the door to make sure that Peter wasn't coming to yell at _him_.

"Alright. I'm staying here," Lucy crossed her arms and sat on his bed, bouncing slightly.

"Lucy, _please_ leave!" he said, trying to keep his temper in check.

"Fine," she pouted, "But can I bring this book with me? It has nice pictures."

She held up his copy of the Bible.

"No, Lucy, you have your own!" he said, grabbing it back. One of the thin pages ripped out.

Both children's eyes went wide. Lucy stared at the ripped paper in her brother's hand.

"Lucy," he whispered, blinking back tears. _This _book had come from his father just before he left to fight, and Edmund had prided himself in keeping it in perfect condition.

"I'm_ so sorry,_ Edmund . . ." she whispered back.

"Leave," he said flatly. She left, Bible still in hand.

He stared at the thin page in his hand, sitting on the bed. He couldn't tell where in the Bible it had come from; his eyes were so full with tears.

Angrily, he slammed it down on the nightstand beside his bed. It was all Lucy's fault. _Everything _was Lucy's fault. The bullies had gone after him because he had an annoying little sister. Everyone ignored him because Lucy existed. He got in trouble so often because of Lucy.

He threw open his door and ran down the stairs and out the door, ignoring his mother calling him back for supper. He needed to get rid of his anger quickly.

He stood in the middle of the yard, looking for anything to hit or yell at.

There. The oak tree.

He took deliberately slow steps toward the tree. The dry grass crackled beneath his feet.

The oak stood, seeming to mock him and his anger. It didn't move in the face of his fury. He pulled his fist back and swung. His hand met the bark.

It didn't make a sound. That angered him more. He swung again. He almost missed, and his fingers skidded across the rough wood.

A hiss escaped him. He pulled his bruised and bleeding hand down between his knees as he bent over.

The pain hit him in a wave. He gasped.

Once he decided that he could trust himself to open his eyes and move his hand, he brought it up to survey the damage.

His knuckles were torn up and the skin was peeled off. There was blood seeping slowly over the purple bruises. Splinters stuck up in different places.

He started back inside to bandage the wounded member. The door opened, and out came the reason for all his troubles.

_Lucy._

His hand went into his pocket. It wouldn't do to let her see; she would just tell their mother, which would make the entire story come out, and he would get a lecture about controlling his anger.

"Hullo, Ed!" she said brightly, "Mummy says to tell you that supper's ready!"

"Thank you," he said with his teeth clenched. He wouldn't betray his pain through his voice.

"You're welcome," she said, obviously taken aback at his attitude.

He held the door for her with his good hand, forcing politeness. He wouldn't get anyone mad at him before he could bandage his hand. No one would see it if he could help it. But then . . . they would notice the bandage. He growled in frustration, causing Lucy to stare at him nervously. He shook his head and waved her on.

After he closed the door, the second reason for his sufferings confronted him.

"What's up with you, Ed?" Peter asked.

"Nothing," he shot back, trying to open his fingers in his pocket, and then wincing at the effort.

"What's wrong?" Peter asked again, sounding genuinely concerned.

"Nothing," he insisted.

"Ed," he said dangerously, stepping closer. Edmund craned his neck uncomfortably to look his brother in the eye, but no matter what, he would _not_ back down.

"I ran into a tree," he said, raising his eyebrows and trying to sound like he wasn't telling to truth.

Peter sighed and gave up, stepping away.

"Well, wash up. Supper's on the table."

Edmund ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. He rinsed the blood off his hand, and then gritted his teeth and rubbed soap into it. If it got infected, his mother would find out for sure.

He rubbed it off on his shirt, sighing angrily when blood ran across the hem.

Opening the door, he ran into Lucy again, who was poised to knock.

"Let's go," he told her quickly, brushing past her and down the stairs to the table.

---------------------------------------

"Edmund, what's wrong with your hand?" his mother asked, looking at his arm that ran down below the tabletop. His hand hadn't appeared all evening, making him eat clumsily and mutter curses under his breath when he dropped his food. He kept it in his lap under the table.

"Nothing," he said automatically.

"Ed," Peter threatened for the second time that evening.

"I ran into a tree."

"Edmund, dear, _please_ tell me what's wrong," Helen pleaded.

"I told you, I ran into a tree!" he said again.

"Ed, could you show me your hand?" Susan asked gently, holding out her own hand.

He scooted his chair further away from her, "No."

"Ed!" Peter sounded angry.

Reluctantly, his hand dropped into his older sister's.

"Edmund!" she cried, examining it, "What happened?!"

He gave her a look.

"Yes, I heard that you ran into a tree, but . . . my goodness!" she rubbed her finger lightly over one of the scratches.

He hissed and jerked his hand away.

"Why would you run into a tree, Ed?" Lucy asked.

He looked in her direction. She was looking back innocently, but he knew that underneath the sweet expression, she was really taunting him.

_The reason for his troubles._

"Because _somebody _ruined my belongings," he looked pointedly Lucy.

"I said I was sorry!" she protested.

_But you aren't._

"So? It's still ruined."

"Edmund, she apologized. Forgive her," Susan said firmly.

"She ruined my _Bible. The one that Dad gave me. It can't be fixed."_

"It can, Ed. We'll tape it back," Peter said.

"We don't have the money, Peter. And that still won't make it better."

"Ed, we can try, if you let us," his brother insisted, obviously trying to reign in his temper.

"Who's 'us'?" Edmund taunted, trying to make him explode.

"Your family," Peter ground out.

"I don't believe you," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"_Edmund!_" Peter shouted.

"Yes?"

"Leave. Now."

He left.

----------------------

Sitting on his bed, he wondered if he had gotten Peter _too_ angry. What if he came in and yelled at him again, making Mum come up and scold him?

That wasn't too bad . . .

The worst the he had ever seen Peter do was hit someone, and that was in defense of Lucy. He would never hit his little brother, would he?

He flopped back, still thinking.

Why did Peter only defend the girls? Because he loved the girls more.

What was happening to Dad? He didn't know.

Why did everyone love Lucy so much? He didn't know that either.

--------------

He woke up in the middle of the night. Someone had taken his shoes off and laid him length-wise across his bed. Moonlight was streaming in his window and creating a square of light on the floor. A shadow temporarily blocked the light.

The sirens went off.

He jumped up and ran out of his room and down the hall. Peter was exiting his own room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Their mother stumbled out in her bathrobe. Susan rushed past them and down the stairs, clutching a large bundle that he assumed was Lucy. Helen followed her daughter, and Peter followed his mother. As Edmund took a last look at the hallway, Lucy tripped out of her room, yawning. Her eyes were still closed.

She was sleepwalking, clutching her pillow.

"Lucy!" he yelled, shaking her. She was barely smaller than he was; he wouldn't be able to carry her down to the shelter by himself.

Her eyes fluttered opened.

"Come on!" he cried, grabbing her hand.

"What?" she mumbled, stumbling on a stair.

"The sirens went off, Lucy, we have to get to the shelter," he explained as patiently as he could.

"But what about Peter and Susan and Mummy?" she asked, alarmed.

"They're waiting for us; come _on_!"

He gave her another tug and she tripped.

"_Lucy!_" he tried to pull her back up.

She whimpered.

"Come on, Lucy," he tried again.

"Eddy, my foot's stuck," she moaned.

"Stuck in what?" he asked, exasperated.

"I don't know!" she wailed, and then cut off, "Eddy, what if it's a ghost?"

"It's not a ghost, Lucy, ghost's aren't real, now _pull your foot out_!"

"I can't!" she said, shrieking as a bomb made impact in a street near the one that their house was on.

He looked around nervously, and then threw himself down beside her, wondering vaguely when Peter was going to come help him.

"Where's your foot?" he asked.

"Here," she said.

"Where?"

"Here," she insisted, and he realized that she was pointing.

"Lucy, I can't see anything. Tell me where your foot is."

"Did you get hit on the head? Why can't you see?" she asked nervously.

"It's dark! Now move my hand towards your foot so that I can get you _un_-stuck!"

"Alright," she said meekly, pulling his hand down.

He groped in the darkness around her ankle. It seemed like . . . a piece of wood?

He grabbed it and pulled. It didn't move.

"Ed?"

"What?" he snapped.

"There's another something around my knee."

He grabbed her knee. There was another piece of wood in front of it.

What was going on?

He ran his hand up the wood until he touched a piece of fabric. His hand jerked back, but he tentatively reached back.

A tablecloth.

Her leg was stuck between two legs of a table. He pulled on this table leg. Lucy whimpered.

"Peter, where are you?" he muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He pulled again, feeling weak when it didn't budge.

"Lucy, I'm going to stand up. I'm not leaving; I'm trying to find a knife."

"A what?!" she cried.

He ignored her and reached for the tabletop. His hand touched something metal. Pulling himself up, he felt the object. A spoon.

He groped around the table with vigor. A napkin. A dirty plate. He grimaced, moving on.

"Yes!" he whispered.

"Ed?" Lucy asked nervously.

He grasped the hilt of the knife and knelt down again.

"Ed?" she asked again, more desperately.

"Lucy, I'm going to try to cut off-"

"_My leg_?" she shrieked.

"_The thing that has you stuck!" _he said, almost out of patience with his sister's imagination.

"Oh."

He shook his head and began sawing.

He realized very quickly that this was a butter knife. It wasn't very sharp and therefore not fit for his situation. He threw it down angrily and sat back. The bombs were coming closer.

Lucy sounded like she was crying now.

"I'm going to try lifting it," he told her.

He stood back up, grasping the edge of the table. He lifted, gritting his teeth against the pain that went through his wounded hand.

"Can you move yourself?" he ground out. It was a heavy table.

She swung her leg out from underneath and he dropped the piece of furniture with a bang, making Lucy jump.

"Now let's go!"

He grabbed her hand and ran.

"Ed, it hurts!" she moaned.

"Well, pretend it doesn't!" he called back, holding back an expression of pain as Lucy squeezed his fingers harder in terror.

"Ed, _it hurts_!"

He growled and stopped, grunting as he picked her up and stumbled out the door.

He had almost reached the shelter when Lucy cried, "Susie's still in there!"

"It's a _stuffed dog_!"

"But she's still in there!" she wailed.

He set her down none-too-gently and ran back.

_How did I end up doing this?_

He tore back up to her room and reached for her lamp. The power was out.

_It figures._

A bomb hit a house across the street. It caught fire, and he was glad for the light.

There was Susie, lying next to the bed.

He snatched it up and ran.

--------------

He burst through the door to the shelter. Susan jumped.

He threw the dog at Lucy and dropped onto the bunk underneath Peter, panted heavily.

"Thank you, Ed," Lucy said meekly.

"Welcome."

He leaned back against the wall and examined his hand. It had turned a beautiful shade of purple, mottled with occasional streaks of red blood.

He shook it, unconsciously mimicking what Peter did when he got hurt.

Lucy started walking toward him. He pretended to be asleep, and heard her soft footsteps turn back.

He didn't remember after that.

---------------

When Edmund woke up, he was still in the shelter with the rest of the family. The bombs seemed to have stopped, but everyone was asleep.

He slid out of bed and cautiously opened the door. Peering out, he decided that it would be safe to venture further.

The house was still standing, though one side seemed charred. The windows had blown out and the damage was probably worse inside.

"Not _too_ bad," a voice said behind him.

He jumped and whirled to face the speaker.

There stood Peter, the reason that he had almost _died_ saving Lucy. Peter hadn't been there to help him.

"I would have come, you know. Mum wouldn't let me."

"Mum wanted you alive. She didn't care about me," Edmund retorted.

"Edmund, you know that's not true."

"Fine. But Dad loved me more."

"Ed, Mum's trying to take care of all of us by herself. She's doing the best that she can; please give her credit for trying."

Edmund didn't recognize _this_ Peter. The Peter _he_ knew would have yelled at him long before now.

"Here," he handed Edmund a book, "I worked on it while you were helping Lucy."

His Bible.

"You—you fixed it?"

"I did my best," Peter said nervously.

Edmund's first reaction was to get mad. Why did Peter think that he could fix the Bible that Dad had given him?

His second reaction was to thank Peter for the work that he put into this.

He went with the latter.

"Thank you, Peter," he said quietly.

"Actually, don't thank me. Lucy made me do it. I didn't want to at first; I thought you didn't deserve it. But she insisted, so I worked on it for her sake. Now, though, I think you earned it."

Edmund blinked at Peter's confession. He really should have expected this. His older brother _would_ have done this small act of kindness for Lucy's sake, not his. He didn't know how to react, so he started inside the house to survey the damage.

The first thing he noticed was the table. It had knife marks on the bottom of one of the legs.

"Mum's table!" Peter cried, running over it, "Ed, come here and look what looters did."

"That . . . that was me."

"What?!" Peter turned back toward him and stood up.

"Lucy's leg was stuck! I went at it with a butter knife to get her un-stuck!" he protested.

"Ed . . . _Mum's table_. It's completely ruined. If we need to sell it, it won't come in for half as much money anymore!"

"It's Lucy's fault; she got stuck! I was trying to help her!"

"Fine. I've seen enough."

Peter went back out, and Edmund followed sullenly.

He had decided something.

Peter was trying to replace his father.

-----------------------

It was after Beruna. Peter and Edmund were in the shared tent after an evening of partying with fauns and centaurs and dryads.

Edmund had woken from a nightmare in a cold sweat and had fallen from his hammock with a _thump_.

He sat up, rubbing the back of his head and wondering at this particular dream.

It wasn't about his time with the Witch, as the others had been. It was about England; one night in particular, but his subconscious had twisted it in different ways so that it didn't go as it should have.

------

"_Ed, my foot's stuck!" Lucy cried._

_He pulled again._

"_Stop, Ed, I'm stuck and it hurts!"_

"_Lucy!" he cried angrily, bending down to her level and pulling at her foot._

_She wailed in pain._

_He let go and got up. He couldn't control his own movements._

_His feet took him out the door, away from Lucy's screams. A bomb fell near their house, and he picked up a piece of rubble. His hands forced him to shove it in front of the door to the bomb shelter so that no one could get out._

_He waited until morning, curled up against the side. _

_His feet brought him back to the house. His hands opened the door._

_There was Lucy, stuck under the table, charred to death._

_------------_

There were other versions also. In some, he himself was stuck and no one helped him because he would only betray them later, in Narnia, if they did. In others, he stayed with Lucy and was killed by a piece of glass from the window before Lucy could get out, and she told him that it was his fault that she had died. He hadn't tried hard enough.

The worst was when his hands had grabbed the knife from the table and stabbed his little sister. Sweet, innocent Lucy was trapped, defenseless, under the table, bleeding to death. And he had left her there.

He had to go find her to be sure that she was alive.

He stepped out of the tent and asked the faun on duty were the girls' tent was. After being given directions, he crept towards Lucy, trying not to wake her.

Very soon, he realized that he couldn't tell if she was alive when she was sleeping.

"Lucy?" he whispered, blinking back tears. What if she wasn't alive?

She didn't move.

"Lucy?" he asked louder.

"Hmm?" she mumbled, raising her head.

"Lucy!"

"What?" she jumped up, clearly awake.

"Oh, thank Aslan!"

"Edmund? What's going on?"

"I'm so sorry, Lucy! So, so, sorry . . . " he cried into his hands.

"Edmund?" she was scared now, "Are you alright?"

"Are you?" he looked up at her.

"Yes, of course! What's wrong, Ed; why're you crying? Did something happen to Peter?" she grabbed her dagger.

He shuddered. In his dream, he had _stabbed_ her. Sweet, little Lucy . . .

The tears started anew.

"Edmund, tell me what's wrong!"

"Do . . . do you remember that night . . . back in England . . . during a raid, when you tripped and got stuck under the table?" he choked.

She nodded nervously.

"I had a . . . a dream about it, and it was different."

"How different?"

"Horribly different! I left you there, and you were dead the next morning! Or I died, and then you died and blamed me, or I stabbed you with the knife!" he sobbed.

"Oh, Ed . . . " she whispered, sinking down to be on level with him on the ground.

"I'm sorry I woke you; I had to be sure that you were alive," he whispered.

"I'm completely alive, I promise! Just remember that _that didn't happen_. _You saved me_. Not Peter. Not Susan. _You _did."

He held her in his lap, burying his face in her hair. She was still alive. He hadn't killed her. He had saved her.

When he finally pulled away, strands of her hair were stuck to his tear-streaked face.

"Thank you, Edmund, for saving me that night. I love you."

"You're welcome Thank you Lucy. I love you too," he told her back, and he really meant it.

-------------------

As mentioned before, this is not meant to be incest. I think that's just gross and . . . ick.

Please review!


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